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Asian Transformations in Action - Api-fellowships.org

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132 REFIGURATION OF IDENTITIES AND FUTURES IN TIMES OF TRANSFORMATIONreal power lies elsewhere.If the sett<strong>in</strong>g suggests a power vacuum, everyth<strong>in</strong>g fromhere onwards <strong>in</strong> the film, with its concentration onAidit and his plotters, sta<strong>in</strong>s their actions as orig<strong>in</strong>at<strong>in</strong>gby association from the palace.The f<strong>in</strong>al scene shows Nasution’s <strong>in</strong>jured youngestdaughter ly<strong>in</strong>g alone <strong>in</strong> her cot-like hospital bed, theyoungest victim, recall<strong>in</strong>g Sukarno ly<strong>in</strong>g alone <strong>in</strong> hisbed from the open<strong>in</strong>g scene, except here she comesafter images of the people <strong>in</strong> national mourn<strong>in</strong>g. Thenation’s hopes and dreams lies <strong>in</strong> the balance betweenlife and death, <strong>in</strong> the fragile body of a little girl, but if, asthe scene <strong>in</strong> front of her father’s pa<strong>in</strong>t<strong>in</strong>g suggests, she isnot a pejuang or warrior, it is precisely because her timewill come at the end of the film where death will be theb<strong>in</strong>tang (star) that confirms her status as a pejuang.The nation spaceSpace constructed <strong>in</strong> b<strong>in</strong>ary oppositions allows fora unity under realist representation and seamlessl<strong>in</strong>ear temporality as logical conclusions and closure,articulat<strong>in</strong>g spatial cont<strong>in</strong>uities towards a horizon ofthe ideal, of mythic homeland and future struggles aseternal. The presence of bodies with<strong>in</strong> these spaces thatsignify a fullness and plenitude po<strong>in</strong>ts to an absence of“other,” bodies, lives, and alternatives <strong>in</strong> social, politicaland cultural existences <strong>in</strong> other spaces consigned tothe edges of the map, from the abandoned hut <strong>in</strong> thecountryside to the cardboard shelters <strong>in</strong> urban areas.Where directors choose to depict and present landscape<strong>in</strong> their films, they do so by signal<strong>in</strong>g the “condition ofpossibility” for the “mascul<strong>in</strong>e production of landscapeand its practices of fem<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>e enclosure” (Sipe 2004,92).The narrat<strong>in</strong>g of the nation and its ideology mapsout its struggles <strong>in</strong> public spaces, where duty, honorand sacrifice take precedent, deny<strong>in</strong>g the private andthe personal, which turns space <strong>in</strong>to place. Individualstruggles are firmly located with<strong>in</strong> the larger contextof the nation, the revolution and public life as epicspectacle, where actions and dialogues play out theirtropes for national consciousness.Land needs markers to turn space <strong>in</strong>to place, albeit stillwith<strong>in</strong> the larger agenda of nationalist public sites. It isfor this reason, too, that Connie’s father’s grave cannotbe conta<strong>in</strong>ed with<strong>in</strong> a Javanese landscape but is givena europeanised backdrop, lest the l<strong>in</strong>es of patriarchalorig<strong>in</strong>ation are confused for Javanese ones so that otherdeaths can f<strong>in</strong>d and sow their seeds of mean<strong>in</strong>g andmetaphor as historical markers of blood and sacrificefor nationalist soil. It is no accident that the first imageof the start of the soldiers’ march across Java beg<strong>in</strong>s atBorobodur <strong>in</strong> a long ontological l<strong>in</strong>e, from the executionof the treacherous father by the dutiful son, to thegravesites of Adam and Widya of their union <strong>in</strong> death,to the grave of Lubang Buaya and the aftermath of itsreap<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> the mass miss<strong>in</strong>g graveyards of thousandsacross the Indonesian landscape.As has been discussed <strong>in</strong> this paper, this b<strong>in</strong>ary <strong>in</strong>the divisions of rural and urban landscapes, between<strong>in</strong>teriors and exteriors, sets the scenario for futurestruggles, from nationalism to militarism, that f<strong>in</strong>dtheir conclusion <strong>in</strong> the exercise of power and controlof the nation’s doma<strong>in</strong> <strong>in</strong> the struggle for the <strong>in</strong>teriordomestic spaces <strong>in</strong> G30S.Where pa<strong>in</strong>t<strong>in</strong>gs <strong>in</strong> Darah are utilized to referenceand demarcate land and territory as significations fordivisions <strong>in</strong> ideological struggle as spatial constructs, <strong>in</strong>G30S pa<strong>in</strong>t<strong>in</strong>gs specifically signal the limits of spatialencounters as conditions <strong>in</strong> the <strong>org</strong>anization of gender,hierarchy and power.Two particular scenes and sequences articulate theway <strong>in</strong> which gender conta<strong>in</strong>s and def<strong>in</strong>es space, <strong>in</strong>the way that landscape politics or, for our purposes,space and its management can show “how mascul<strong>in</strong>eforms of landscape… have produced the corollary offem<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>e enclosure, whether symbolic, social, physicalor architectural” and <strong>in</strong> the way they frame “their accessto space, that either expand or exceed the conf<strong>in</strong>es of thedomestic sphere,” and help actively shape “a range ofcultural, national and <strong>in</strong>stitutional spaces and, perhapsmost consequentially, the more spatially diverse andfluid spheres of <strong>in</strong>tellectual” (Sipe 2004, 92) and culturalthought and <strong>in</strong> what ways they produce mean<strong>in</strong>g andcontribute to national ideological agenda.In the open<strong>in</strong>g sequences of G30S, where Sukarnolies bedridden attended by Aidit and the CommunistCh<strong>in</strong>ese doctors, <strong>in</strong> ten to eleven shot sequences, theleav<strong>in</strong>g and enter<strong>in</strong>g of each frame shows pa<strong>in</strong>t<strong>in</strong>gsof clothed and half clad Javanese women <strong>in</strong> various“fem<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>e” poses on the walls, as well as naked fem<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>ebusts and statues <strong>in</strong> shots where Sukarno is read<strong>in</strong>g athis desk.As mentioned earlier, the palace symbolizes the heartof the nation, the body politic is ail<strong>in</strong>g, and power isbe<strong>in</strong>g dra<strong>in</strong>ed while Aidit and the communists are<strong>in</strong>troduc<strong>in</strong>g foreign elements <strong>in</strong>to Sukarno’s bodyvia acupuncture, so that dra<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g is a consequence<strong>Asian</strong> <strong>Transformations</strong> <strong>in</strong> <strong>Action</strong>The Work of the 2006/2007 API Fellows

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